Asset location maps are not a guarantee of an underground utility’s exact position, and without digital records Australia’s era of expansion could be fraught with danger.
Australia is facing an urgent need for new infrastructure, driven by rapid population growth and the transition to renewable energy. As new housing developments crop up, utilities from all sectors not only need to expand their networks to accommodate the next generation but ensure that their current assets are in good condition.
To meet demand, these projects can’t afford to delay. But when work begins, if unbeknownst to construction crews there’s a gas pipeline hiding underneath the surface, then what should have been a celebration quickly becomes an emergency.
The consequences of striking an underground utility are far reaching – impacting safety, project timelines and budgets as well as service reliability.
Contact with gas lines, electrical cables, or pressurised water mains endangers construction workers and anyone else in the vicinity.
Work must then be halted to assess damage, coordinate emergency repairs, and ensure the site is safe to continue. These delays cascade into missed deadlines, idle labour and disrupted supply chains, and ultimately budget blow‑outs. For developers and contractors, a single misstep underground can translate into millions lost.
When underground utilities are damaged, this can also trigger widespread outages, affecting homes, businesses, hospitals, and other critical infrastructure – and repeated incidents of utility damage degrade the long-term reliability of these networks.
Preventing these hazards requires proactive planning and accurate data – but when you’re relying on paper maps of assets that were built 50–100 years ago, accuracy is difficult to ensure.
The good old ways
Before You Dig New Zealand General Manager & Utilities Damage Prevention Expert, Phil Cornforth, explained that a lot of utility infrastructure was in the ground decades ago, and all the as-built records were completed on paper. Then, as the sector adopted modern GIS systems, those paper records were simply transferred as is. But with both of those methods, he said there’s room for error.
“At Before You Dig New Zealand, we send out new service plans on behalf of the asset owners to anybody that’s digging – but there’s just so much room for those plans to actually not be correct,” Mr Cornforth said.
This creates challenges for both construction crews working on new developments, as well as utilities looking to upgrade their networks.
“If they don’t know fully where those assets are, then how do you go about a rehabilitation plan? Where do you start?”
This is why Mr Cornforth is advising utilities to map and record asset positions using high-precision GNSS equipment and the Geolantis 360 platform.
“With Geolantis, we’re able to digitally capture this information to put that whole legacy of incorrect plans behind us, and 20 years down the track people won’t be having this problem,” he said.
Geolantis 360 creates accurate, geospatially referenced maps that can be exported into GIS, CAD, or Google Earth formats, and when used alongside GNSS survey-grade equipment it delivers centimetre-level accuracy.
This means utilities and contractors have a reliable, shareable record that they can trust when planning jobs near critical infrastructure.
A simple solution
Implementing a solution to a problem shouldn’t be complex challenge in itself, and Mr Cornforth explained that the idea behind Geolantis was to make this system as simple and easy to use as possible.
“We’re not replacing a utility owner’s GIS system, those systems are pretty well set up. Instead what we’re doing is feeding information into those GIS systems,” he said.
“It allows the utility owner to do away with that old, error prone and also time-consuming approach, and digitally map down to a centimetre where their assets are.
“Then you can just export that data directly into a GIS format, or AutoCAD, format. And designers can still check the quality before directly uploading it straight into their own GIS systems.”
This solution isn’t just more accurate, it also helps locators and utilities to save a lot of time and resources.
“It’s a fairly straightforward app,” Mr Cornforth said.
“For the people that are out there in the field using it, it’s just a few pushes of the button to start your mapping.
This needs to be coupled with an external piece of hardware – so it’s a high precision GPS antenna that can easily be coupled with a locator. And most of the modern, high-precision utility locators are compatible with the system as well.
Mr Cornforth said that pairing the devices is just like any Bluetooth device. All you need to do is switch the two devices on and press a button.
“It also doesn’t really matter what type of asset they’ve got. It’s configurable to any type of asset,” he said.
This means that instead of spending their time out on-site with a tape measure, sketching the location of an asset, project managers can use their time to ensure that works are completed on time.
“If somebody comes along with a digger or a shovel and smashes up your cable underneath the ground because they didn’t know where it was – no other priority you had matters if your cable doesn’t work, so you’ve got to send somebody out there to repair it.”
For Mr Cornforth, adopting a digital approach gives utilities and contractors certainty – not just in asset positions, but also in the cost of asset protection, strike avoidance, and minimising unnecessary relocations.
This in turn supports better planning and improved health and safety outcomes.
“Everything eventually will be digital. So if your current system of documenting where your assets are is a very manual process, then you’ve always got that room for errors in there,” Mr Cornforth said.
“By using Geolantis to digitally capture your assets, you’re dispensing with the possibility of getting it wrong.”
For more information, visit geolantis.com
